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But can it possibly be justified here in Britain, where authority has so much of our money that it pays for disabled people to visit prostitutes and feeds and houses those who claim that
they can’t stop taking heroin, when the truth is that they take it
because they like it, and laugh at us for letting them sponge on us?

Is there really anyone in Britain who needs to beg?

I suppose it’s
possible that an honest person, prepared to work and free of drugs, can
end up destitute on the street, thanks to some mad bureaucratic
Catch-22.

But my guess is that those who really need our spare change are the
lonely old, dying slowly and silently in chilly homes, far too proud to
ask anyone for help.

As for the rest, I think we all owe some thanks to the police in the fine city of Lincoln, who have kept a
close eye on their beggars and found that many are fakes, and some are
‘threatening and intimidating’.

One in particular – who is not homeless – regularly makes more than £50
a day. I’ll bet that many of those who give to this particular crook
are themselves on tiny incomes.

This isn’t a new problem. In the
Sherlock Holmes story The Man With The Twisted Lip, written more than a
century ago, a professional young man discovers
he can make far more as a fake beggar than he can in his
ordinary job.

But it is a much worse problem now, and I think the only thing to do is to refuse all the pleas of beggars, and give the money you would have paid them to an effective, realistic charity such as the Salvation Army.

But I advise you not to bother explaining, or you too could get a black eye.

Just because it’s French doesn’t mean it isn’t tosh

The great British middle classes love French films because watching
them – the elegant women, the delicious meals, the handsome townscapes,
the relaxed way of life compared with ours – is a little like taking a
holiday in France.

Who cares about the story, or the acting?

Rather nasty: Kristin Scott Thomas and co-star Sergi Lopez in Leaving

This is the only thing that can explain the absurd praise given to
the new Kristin Scott Thomas vehicle Leaving, a yawn-inducing and
rather nasty production, full of absurdities, which seems to me to be
tinged with anti-semitism.

Miss Scott Thomas is, of course, a fine
actress, and her ability to perform in French is impressive. But it is
not enough to excuse this stuff.

Abolish WHAT drug laws?

I am awarding this week’s Order of Gullible Stupidity to Sir Ian
­Gilmore, a senior doctor who has lent his name to the modish and
well-financed campaign to abolish what’s left of Britain’s drug laws.

The
professor is mouthing the standard line of these people, that the
anti-drug laws are the cause of most of the problems connected with
drugs in this country.Where do these people live? Are they actually conscious?

The drug
laws have not been enforced for years. There is no ‘war on drugs’. The
‘decriminalisation’ these ­people seek happened decades ago.

It is
this failure to punish stupid and criminal acts, and the insis­tence on
subsidising and cosseting wilful criminals as if they were ill, or victims, that is causing our drug crisis.

Tragedy lies in wait when cousins wed

When
first cousins marry, they take a terrible risk. In some cases, their
children will inherit disastrous, horrifying disabilities.

This is a statistical fact, and doctors know it.

But the medical authorities in this country are reluctant to talk
about it because most such marriages take place among British Asians,
where they have long been a strong part of the culture. They fear –
with some reason – that they will be falsely accused of ‘racism’.

So
much praise is due to Channel 4 for making a cour­ageous and moving
documentary on this subject (When Cousins Marry, tomorrow, 8pm), which
will almost certainly have you in tears if you have any feelings at all.

The
film goes more deeply, generously and sym­pathetically inside Britain’s
Pakistani community than anything else I’ve seen on British TV, thanks
to a highly intelligent and fair-minded piece of presenting and
reporting by Tazeen Ahmad. With a bit of luck, it will at last allow
this difficult subject to be discussed openly, and many personal
tragedies to be avoided.

*********************************Unusually,
I must give unconditional praise to Anthony Blair for his good decision
to donate the advance for and proceeds of his memoirs to the British
Legion. This is, at last, a sign that he begins to understand what he
has done. Next he must find some way of helping the many Iraqis whose
lives he ruined.

*********************************Back
in the days of John Major it was the consensus that the universities
should be expanded. Those who argued that this was folly were frozen
out of the national debate.As usual, the consensus has been proved wrong, and the sidelined dissenters right. Will we learn from it? No.

For months, supermarkets have been selling summer fruits at ‘half-price’. This is legalised fraud and should be banned.

They sold them at ‘full price’ for a few fleeting days at the start of the season, and will do so again at the end. But the real price is surely the one that lasts the longest time. If only we had realised, when these cynical, chilly shops first appeared, that they would destroy a way of life and put us all at their mercy.

Now, as they seek to force us to do their work for them, with Dalek-like, dehumanised tills, we see just how unsmiling and ruthless they are, in contrast to their matey advertisements.

Actually, we can stop this by simply refusing to use these tills, and insisting on being served by a human being. It could be the first step in a long-needed campaign to reduce the power of the supermarket monsters.